La Sainte Alliance (The Holy Alliance)

This etching depicts three stages of a political alliance: before, during, and after. Two figures in formal dress negotiate while a cloaked clergyman observes; they then embrace; finally, one lies prostrate and defeated. The print satirizes the coalition between Catholic clerical interests and liberal political factions against the Dutch government, employing the vocabulary of European political satire inherited from Gillray and Rowlandson. The engraving's sequential narrative—showing negotiation, collusion, and ruin—prefigures the comic strip's panel structure. Such prints, mass-produced and distributed throughout the 19th century, formed public opinion through visual argument and moral caricature, establishing techniques that would shape modern comics and graphic narrative.